Gregory Orekhov

SoftPower Installation

SOFTPOWER INSTALLATION

Gregory Orekhov

SoftPower Installation
© Nikita Subbotin

ARCHITECTS
Gregory Orekhov

DIMENSIONS
7 m diameter x 3 m height

PHOTOGRAPHER
Nikita Subbotin

YEAR
2025

LOCATION
France

CATEGORY
Installations & Structures

SoftPower Installation
© Nikita Subbotin

English description provided by the architects.

SoftPower is a visual allusion to sandbags - objects deeply rooted in the imagery of war zones and natural disasters.

SoftPower Installation
© Nikita Subbotin
SoftPower Installation
© Nikita Subbotin

Typically used for urgent protection and defense, they symbolize fear, pressure, and resistance. But in this work, they are stripped of weight. Instead of sand - air. Instead of threat - silence.

These pillow-like forms, stacked in a circle, do not create a fortification, but rather a space for stillness and retreat.

SoftPower Installation
© Nikita Subbotin
SoftPower Installation
© Nikita Subbotin

Not a barricade, but a temporary sanctuary. The work transforms a symbol of fear and defense into a metaphor for fragile yet resilient inner strength.

SoftPower speaks to the need to defend ourselves not with weapons, but with culture. It is an attempt to protect not with a wall, but with a gesture, delicate, silent, yet full of meaning.

SoftPower Installation
© Nikita Subbotin
SoftPower Installation
© Nikita Subbotin

France was chosen as the site of the project for a reason. It is one of the few countries that has long projected its cultural identity across the world, using precisely the tools of soft power.

In this sense, the work becomes a dialogue with place, with tradition, with the history of influence.

SoftPower Installation
© Nikita Subbotin
SoftPower Installation
© Nikita Subbotin

SoftPower invites the viewer to enter a fragile monument. It is an architecture not of power, but of silence. Not of closure, but of concentration. A work about how art can become a form of protection, not from the world, but for it.


SoftPower Installation
© Nikita Subbotin
SoftPower Installation
© Nikita Subbotin